


the parting glass

by bomburjo



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Angst and Feels, Depressing, Episode: s01e10 We Are Gone, Gen, Goodsir Family Feelings, Implied/Referenced Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-02
Updated: 2019-12-02
Packaged: 2021-02-26 04:40:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21647713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomburjo/pseuds/bomburjo
Summary: Harry remembers them well, or thinks he does.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18
Collections: The Terror Bingo (2019)





	the parting glass

Harry remembers them well, or thinks he does. 

It is difficult now.

He sees the memories through a fogged window, as if he must peer like a thief into the various rooms of his own mind. There seems to be no light inside these internal spaces, where the shadows are deep and impenetrable. 

But images come.

There is a table, and he recalls the hands of his mother folded around a cup of tea. An artist’s hands, delicate and fine, with the gift to both bring life to small drawings and wipe a spot of dirt from Harry’s brow. 

His father’s hands also are nearby, as they reach for the glass decanter always kept on the sideboard under the window — the one with the view of the garden in its splendor. 

The sea is beyond. There is salt on the air.

For whatever reason, Harry remembers his father’s glass bottle most of all, and how it curved in lines as sensual as a flower’s, and caught the sun to scatter colors on the kitchen floor, and how his young mind then wondered, _What is light made of?_

All at once, he is in the cramped flat at No. 21 Lothian Street, breathless from climbing the stairs, their pets Cæsar and Doodle seeking attention underfoot. He sees the tall, dark form of his eldest brother, John, engrossed in discussion with Forbes while they examine some new specimen. 

The attic is awash with curiosities and creatures. A frog skin dries on the windowsill. Fish and molluscs fill pots. Other occupants are moving within the place, voices behind walls. The sunlight here is dim, having fought through the murk of Edinburgh’s ether.

But he still notes the cruets for his brother’s whiskey, made of etched green glass with broad stoppers like the heads of mushrooms, waiting near the entry. 

These were the very bottles brought forth to celebrate the formation of John’s Brotherhood, he remembers. In quieter moments at his table, Harry’s gaze might come to rest on them as he wrote. They were such a lovely green.

Now, he closes his eyes and reaches for these relics of the past.

And when he opens them, it is not a beautifully crafted glass he holds, but a small bottle wrapped in torn cloth, bearing a handwritten label. 

“Sugar of Lead,” it says in his scrawl. 

A lie, as the concoction of morphine, opium, calomel, mandragora, and laudanum is already burning in his chest as it moves down his esophagus. 

He stops up the bottle, and waits.

 _I am sorry_ , he thinks. 

He apologizes five times, once for each of his brothers and his beloved sister, whom he now surely will never see again. 

Twice more, one for his father and another for his mother, already gone to her grave.

His body rebels. The poison stays down. 

The sunshine of his youth is very far away. In this place, it is dark, and wind whistles over the shale, and there is pain in his every bone and a cold that has settled into his center like a weight. 

But still, he knows that above him, there are stars, glittering as pinpricks of light might on the cut edges of fragile glass.

He smells the sea.

He places the empty medicine bottle in his case and gently closes the lid. 

**Author's Note:**

> For my Terror Bingo square, "decanter."
> 
> Many thanks to [pyotr](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyotr/pseuds/pyotr) for reading and fact-checking!
> 
> \- Title from a song, specifically the version by [The Wailin' Jennys](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUK-8M3Vhzc). ("So fill to me the parting glass / Good night and joy be with you all.")  
> \- The Goodsir family home referenced here is [Rosebank](http://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB36071), in Anstruther.  
> \- The flat at 21 Lothian Street is where John Goodsir lived with several of his younger brothers for a time, they were absolute madmen there.


End file.
